


A Touch of Blood

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Justified
Genre: M/M, Post-Series, Yuletide 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 03:18:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5359157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tramble Penitentiary <i>is</i> a long damn way from Miami.  Raylan isn’t sure why he goes there, still.  Once a year, every year.  It’s become some kind of a twisted anniversary, the birthday of the lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Touch of Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairy_tale_echo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairy_tale_echo/gifts).



“Now, any man can walk towards temptation, but it takes a real man to walk away from it.”  
                  - Boyd Crowder, series finale

**A Touch of Blood**

Tramble Penitentiary _is_ a long damn way from Miami. Raylan isn’t sure why he goes there, still. Once a year, every year. It’s become some kind of a twisted anniversary, the birthday of the lie. Each year, he sees Willa blow out yet another candle on her cake, and he thinks of Boyd’s boy. Ava’s boy. Zachariah, she had named him, after her uncle, the man Boyd shot. One of the many men Boyd shot.

But Boyd ain’t never shot _him_.

He wasn’t planning on it, sure as shit didn’t go there in the first place thinking of ever coming back. But, hell. That goddamn sociopath got all teary eyed on him. And the weirdest thing was, Raylan found himself smiling back, _laughing_ even. He had looked for a reason to get off the phone. Boyd’s shiny veneers that make his smile look predatory, like a wolf in preacher’s clothing, somehow hypnotising him into a sense of melancholy. An almost longing that stayed with him long after he walked out of Tramble.

It was the guilt that brought him back. That’s all, just the guilt. There ain’t ever been such a thing as a simple lie. You drop that seed in the ground, it takes root. Before you know it, it’s a fully grown vine, winding in on itself, covers the whole house, wraps around your entire body, till it chokes you.

It was the guilt that brought him back, but it was something else entirely that made him stay.

***

“Not that kinda visitor” is exactly what Raylan Givens is. With his smug, shit eating grin, and that _shitty_ timing. God _damn._ Boyd presses his lips to the Bible, that leathery binding almost as smooth as human flesh, and feels it burn against his skin.

There isn’t much in his life that he regrets. He’s lucky to have been given this chance, to keep walking the path, such as it is, after so long. His fingers trace the circular, jagged scar on his chest, where Raylan put a bullet in him when he first got back to Harlan. Less than an inch away from the heart. Boyd knows it wasn’t Jesus who stuck his hand out and deflected that bullet. Just as he knew back then that pain in his soul wasn’t no kind of a summoning from the Lord. He knows Raylan doesn’t shoot to miss. He knows Raylan.

Below that bullet scar, if he were to trace down the lines of his own body, he’d find yet more scars. The scars from Kuwait. The scars from Harlan. Ava's parting gift, too.  What a fucking joke, ha _ha_. To survive the war only to die in a supermax in Kentucky.

Only he ain’t gonna die. He’s gonna keep on living. Keep walking the path. Year to year. Visit to visit.

***

“Raylan Givens,” the fiend, the tempter, Boyd Born Again and Again grins at him from beyond the glass. “Ha _ha_.” He has that unique way of laughing. That odd inflection, the affected insistence of dragging out the second ‘ha.’ No one else laughs that way, Raylan thinks. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He pretends that he doesn’t keep track of the calendar. Raylan pretends the same thing. A story made up to cover it up, each year a new excuse.

“Just drivin’ through, Boyd, thought I’d make sure you’re still locked up tight.”

Each year, his excuses get flimsier as the hair on his temples gets grayer. Boyd’s hair isn’t graying. Like the man refuses to accept the passage of time. Maybe God really does exist, and maybe Boyd Crowder somehow is his favorite.

“Well, it warms my heart, you know, to be in the presence of such tender concern.” And he smiles, the veneers flashing like fangs in the bright glow of the overhead fluorescent lights. Raylan can’t help but lean closer to the glass. “The strangest thing happened the other day, Raylan,” Boyd starts to speak, and Raylan knows some cockamayme story is about to follow, probably completely made up, but it doesn’t matter. The truth is, he could listen to Boyd spin his bullshit yarns for hours. His eyes, that deep blue that never had any business being in a face belonging to a Crowder, seem to glow, almost with a preternatural fire. If Raylan believed in the Holy Ghost, he’d believe Boyd was truly inspired by it. He may not buy into any of Boyd’s religious fervor, but he _gets_ it. He knows what those sorry-ass convicts see in Boyd.

“Don’t you ever get tired of listening to yourself talk?” Raylan asks after way too many minutes have ticked by.

“It ain’t about my tiredness, Raylan Givens. I wasn’t talking up a storm just to please myself.”

“You take care of yourself, Boyd,” he says.

“See you next year, Raylan.”

***

The nights are quiet at Tramble Penitentiary. Sometimes, you can hear the rhythmic noise of a man pleasuring himself. Sometimes, you hear the scraping of someone making a shiv. It’s a fine line between the big death and the little death.

Boyd does pray sometimes, and when he does, he prays for Raylan. And his little girl, whose picture the marshall produced recently on the dimly glowing screen of his phone and showed Boyd with unfettered pride. He’d been hesitant at first - only a fool would show his enemy his weakness like that. Only they ain’t enemies, are they? Had plenty of chances to shoot each other, never did. Well, not fatally, anyways.

Boyd touches the scar on his chest and prays again. He prays for Ava’s soul, that she find peace wherever she may be. He thinks she’s probably in Hell. If you asked him, he’d say she belonged there, that blonde-haired she-Judas. That no good Jezebel. But if he asked himself, he’d know, he doesn’t lie to himself. Ava was an angel and belonged in Heaven.

He touches the scar and then his hand slips. And it trails down his stomach, and he shuts his eyes and pretends it isn’t his hand at all. His breath speeds up, he bites his lips, his eyelashes flutter like wild butterflies, and he pictures a face. It’s young and coal-smudged and impertinent. A face that he loved before he really understood what it meant to love.

***

Their hearts were beating so loudly, that Raylan thought it was another explosion shaking them to the core.

“God _damn_ it, Boyd! You’d damn nearly blown us both to smithereens!”

“I’d never blow that pretty head clear off,” Boyd laughed. “Ha _ha_!” He threw his own head back as he laughed and wiped the dirt off his face with the back of his sleeve.

“You’re such a fucking asshole,” Raylan fumed and slammed his friend against the mine’s wall. Above their heads the sediment seemed to move and Boyd’s breath caught in his throat. “Don’t you give a shit at all if you live or die?” Raylan asked, his face so close to Boyd’s in the tenebrous tunnel that he could feel the other man’s breath brush against his lips.

“You ain’t never leaving Harlan alive anyways, Raylan, might as well choose the when and the how.” Boyd grinned. A drop of sweat ran down his face from that tuft of unruly hair that never did accept neither brush nor comb as it’s lord and savior. Raylan pressed his lips against that infuriating face, kissing the sweat away, kissing the smug smile right off.

“I ain’t ready,” Raylan whispered, his hips slamming forward, pinning his friend to the wall.

“I ain’t said I was ready either.”

They were nineteen, barely older than children themselves. Old enough to serve. Old enough to die. Old enough to choose - to do _that_. Boyd’s hand in his pants, seeking, groping. The sense of danger always getting his blood roiling, fuming. Boyd loved playing with fire, but even more than that, Boyd loved playing with Raylan’s cock. Loved watching the uptight Givens kid lose his shit in his grip, his eyes rolling back, biting his lips till they bled, and then Boyd could taste that iron tang in their kiss. It was always better with a touch of blood.

***

Back at the supermax, Boyd bites his own lip until a single, perfect drop appears on the abused skin, and then he sucks it into his mouth.

“You make me pull, I’ll put you down,” Raylan had said the night he had shot him.

But he didn’t. He didn’t.

***

Raylan doesn’t keep tabs on Ava anymore. It’s best that she be dead for everyone involved. Makes the lying easier to swallow, not like it’s a secret he’s keeping for his own sake.

But it’s been ten years, so that kid’s gotta be getting up there now. He’d be old enough to drive soon. And a bit after, old enough to own a gun. He hopes they have more stringent gun control laws over in California.

Ten years, and Crowder’s still preaching. Now, recidivism rates in Kentucky have always been high, but now and then, you encounter an ex-con from Tramble, and - I’ll be damned - he’s on the straight and narrow all thanks to ‘Brother Crowder.’ It could make a man weep if it wasn’t so damned funny.

They don’t talk about Jesus much but sometimes they talk about forgiveness. And when they do, Arlo comes up, and Raylan feels that bone-deep sadness settle and then lift. Because somehow being with Boyd has always made everything feel relative. He lives in the gray. Morality, criminality, ethics, religion. He has his own moral code, Raylan thinks, it’s just that no one’s ever been able to pin down exactly what it is.

And faith. If seeing is believing, then it takes the faith right out of it. Raylan has never put much stock in belief. But with Boyd, that’s all he has to go on. A leap of faith.

***

“Hold my hand.”

“No.”

“Don’t be such a wavering pussy, Raylan. Hold my hand.”

“You’re about to do something _stupid_.”

And he wasn’t wrong: the two of them standing at the precipice. Above them the August sky, below them nothing but air.

“The stupidest thing I ever done was put that thing in my mouth last night, so _hold my damn hand_.”

“This here ain’t some Romeo and Julio _bullshit_ ,” Raylan protested again and Boyd grinned at him, that smile that, even before the veneers, lit up the whole world around them.

“You gotta have a little faith, Raylan.”

Their hands joined together, and then nothing but air beneath their feet, not till they hit water. And then Raylan laughed and laughed, like a man newly baptised, a man breathing freely for the first time. Wet and cold and pressing Boyd against his body and kissing him again if for no other reason than to punish him for making Raylan so happy.

“You gotta believe, Raylan.”

“Shut up, Boyd.”

The sweet waters tasting sweeter on Boyd’s mouth. But _You must never tell anyone about this_. Sweet Jesus, it makes your head spin!

***

It takes a real man to walk away from temptation, and maybe Boyd isn’t a real man, or maybe Raylan Givens isn’t really temptation so much as frustration, but either way, neither one is walking away.

“My parole hearing is in a month.”

“They’ll never let you out, Boyd.”

“Did you see to that, Raylan?”

Their eyes hold across the thick glass. Well, it’s really polycarbonate, not so much glass. If you put your hand against it _just so_ , you can almost feel the other person’s hand _right there_. Raylan’s fingers are long. So is his hair. He could use a hair cut, all told. It’s almost entirely gray now, Boyd notes, but his face still holds that same boyish charm. Those eyes narrowing upon him, that insolent gaze, simultaneously judging and teasing and beckoning. Those damned eyes. Prettier even than Ava’s eyes. Prettier than most.

“I’m not gonna speak at your hearing, Boyd,” Raylan says, but Boyd knows it’s a lie. They always have the arresting officer give testimony at the parole hearing.

“Well, whether you do or not, be kind.” He smiles and his thumb moves along the thick plane of the glass against the phantom of Raylan’s on the other side. What he wouldn’t give to be able to really touch him, if only for a moment.

***

“Hey, old man,” Raylan nods, even though Boyd looks cryogenically frozen, like the past twenty years have meant nothing to him. His eyes are deeper set, and yes, there is white salt now peppering his unruly mane of hair. But that grin is still the same. The veneers have held up.

“Raylan Givens,” Boyd’s smile trembles and his eyes mist over. “What an utterly unexpected surprise.”

“Who did you think would be picking you up from prison? Jesus Christ?”

“Why, Raylan, if I didn’t know any better, I’d have thought you’d gone soft on me.”

Raylan’s hand is on Boyd’s elbow and that touch alone sends a jolt right into Raylan’s chest. He steers the released man towards his car.

“You know, Raylan, I’ve served my time, I’m allowed to go free.”

“I ain’t taking you to another prison, Boyd.”

“Where _are_ you taking me?”

“Home.”

“Home as in…”

“Not Harlan, Boyd. You’re leaving Harlan.”

_Alive._ He didn’t need to say that - Boyd heard it clear enough.

“What about my parole officer? I hope you’re not going to try to entice me into crossing state lines, Raylan. That would be… _ah_ , frowned upon.”

“Taken care of. Don’t worry, old man.”

The plane tickets are in Boyd’s hand and he’s looking at them and at Raylan with an unreadable expression. For once in his life, Raylan thinks, he’s gotten Boyd speechless.

“Florida? You’re taking me to Florida?”

“You got a better place to be?”

“What about all the Jews?” Boyd laughs and Raylan laughs with him. There is only so much he can do before he drags the other man into the airport’s restroom. “US Marshall, I’ll need you to clear this space.” And slams him up against the tiled wall.

“Be careful there, soldier. I ain’t as limber as I was when we were nineteen.”

“Shut up, Boyd.”

It’s strange how right this feels. Raylan doesn’t know when it became _this_. Maybe it really was over the last twenty years, counting days like the beads of a rosary in between each anniversary. Or maybe it was all those years ago, back in that mine, digging coal. Or when he held Boyd’s hand and jumped with him off that cliff and into the cold river below. A baptism of faith. A baptism by fire.

Boyd’s lips are like fire. His chin is freshly shaven and feels smooth against Raylan’s own stubble as their teeth clash. Raylan’s hands are clawing at Boyd’s hair, making it even messier, if at all possible, while the other man turns and slams them both against the stall. Boyd’s body is still surprisingly firm, vibrating with power, his hands as agile as if he was still a kid playing with dynamite. It’s quick and dirty, like they are still teenagers in a mine, and not grown-ass men with decades of hard time and harder secrets behind them. And it doesn’t matter who gets there first, because they know they’re gonna get there.

Together.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yule from your Yule Goat! I hope this was pleasing to you. I know it was very pleasing to me rewatching certain episodes to get in the mood. I miss this show so much!


End file.
